New nations seem to pop up with alarming regularity. At the start of the
20th century, there were only a few dozen independent sovereign states
on the planet; today, there are nearly 200! Once a nation is
established, they tend to stick around for awhile, so a nation
disappearing is quite uncommon. It’s only occurred a handful of times in
the last century.
But when they do, they completely vanish off the face of the globe:
government, flag, and all. Here then, in no particular order, are the
top ten countries that had their moment in the sun but are, alas, no
more.
10. East Germany, 1949-1990East Germany, formally the German Democratic Republic or GDR (German: Deutsche Demokratische Republik or DDR), was a state in the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War period. From 1949 to 1990, it administered the region of Germany that was occupied by Soviet forces at the end of World War II—the Soviet Occupation Zone of the Potsdam Agreement, bounded on the east by the Oder–Neisse line. The…